The one thing I don’t understand in my history textbook is this specific concept. For example, my history book will talk about the Roman Empire. Cool. Then a buncha stuff happens in Europe, Italy, France, UK etc. Cool, but are they just regions part of the empire?
Let’s fast forward to American independence. I think by now the Roman Empire fell or something? I don’t remember. America was a colony, so was Britain already an autonomous state by then? Then we get American independence. After this, we still have the Ottoman Empire that ends up falling after WWI I believe. When does that region split into different countries?
But when did they just become countries? How does that happen? And why settle for a country rather than an empire or vice versa?
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“Empire” is originally a Latin word, “Imperium,” which means “the power to command,” and it comes to us from the Romans. As they fought wars of defense, and occasionally wars of conquest, the nations they conquered became more or less administratively controlled by Rome, and paid taxes, etc. to Rome. This is the origin of our concept of empire. Other ancient states, like Persia, also had arrangements like this. As they expanded economically they would find it necessary or desirable to conquer neighboring states and assume administrative control over them.
Some empires have been extremely centralized. Others allowed the various conquered nations to retain their own government, as long as they acknowledged the supremacy of the imperial power.
Our idea of a “country” or a “nation” with fixed borders, their own money, sovereign government, passports, and so on is a fairly recent development. It’s called the Westphalian system, and it’s only about 400 years old or so. Before then, like say at the time of the Romans, “nations” were simply people bound together by a common language and religion. The borders were there, but they were hazier than they are now.
Before the Westphalian system, empires were more or less as I have described above. After the adoption of the Westphalian system, “Empire” came to mean the same thing, only some allowed some nations to retain an individual identity, and others were completely absorbed into the territory of the conqueror and ceased to exist as nations.
It’s a complex subject.
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